Stage Is Set To Rebuild Ground Zero, Board Says

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

Published: June 3, 2004

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation set the stage yesterday -- that is, if all the needed money can be found and all the inevitable lawsuits can be won -- for the full-fledged redevelopment of the World Trade Center site.

The corporation board unanimously affirmed a general project plan, leaving open the possibility of restoring parts of Dey and Cortlandt Streets but perhaps turning a block of Washington Street into a truck security checkpoint. It also certified that the environmental review was complete. (Not all its critics agree, saying that the review did not sufficiently account for the impact of other large downtown projects.)

''Now we have finally said, 'This is what is going to be built and how we are going to build it,''' said Kevin M. Rampe, president of the corporation. ''The only thing left is implementation.''

On July 4, the start of construction will be marked by a symbolic groundbreaking for the Freedom Tower, the first and tallest of the skyscrapers planned on the site.

In an unusually busy meeting at 1 Liberty Plaza, the corporation board heard the preliminary recommendations of an advisory panel on the interpretive museum, known as the Memorial Center, which will be below the memorial proper.

The panel called for a ''signpost and icon'' identifying the museum at or above street level, using some ''powerful, visible artifact, such as a remnant from the building,'' something not found in the memorial design by Michael Arad and Peter Walker.

The panel suggested that among many facets to be explored at the center, there should be a ''factual presentation of what is known of the terrorists, including their methods and means of preparation.'' Their recommendations were posted for public comment on the corporation's Web site, www.renewnyc.com.

A $500,000 grant approved by the corporation would allow Sound Portraits Productions to open a StoryCorps recording booth at the trade center site, where people would sit for 40-minute interviews, largely about their experiences of 9/11. With the subjects' permission, CD's of the interviews would go to the Memorial Center and the Library of Congress. Excerpts might be broadcast on public radio. Since October 2003, StoryCorps has operated a booth at Grand Central Terminal.

The corporation, which had previously approved $2.6 million for an ice-skating rink and tennis courts to be built by the Hudson River Park Trust, authorized a change yesterday since the rink plan had been scrapped, in part because of community opposition. The money will go instead toward a three-acre field of synthetic grass -- for baseball, football, soccer, lacrosse or rugby -- within the courtyard of Pier 40, at the foot of Houston Street.

The idea of a street-level security checkpoint on Washington Street, between Barclay and Vesey Streets, leading to the Freedom Tower, is almost sure to be controversial.

Indeed, it provoked an unusual public display of ire on the board when Paul A. Crotty, the group president for New York and Connecticut at Verizon, told staff members that the plan would impose a ''major burden'' on the surrounding community, which includes a Verizon central office and switching center at 140 West Street. ''You're going to have trucks circling all day long while they're waiting for clearance,'' Mr. Crotty said.